Captain Planet took one look at the cast of this comic and their relationships, went “Yeah, this is way over my pay grade. Good luck, kids!”, and nope’d right the f*ck out of there.
I think her last healthy relationship ended with her nearly dying in a drunk driving accident, so maybe this dynamic is for the best? I’m talking about whatever she had with Alice by the way, not the Ruth shit show.
Her relationship with Alice is only “maybe slightly healthy” but considering all of this I’m inclined to say it was probably going badly even before Billie literally drove them into a tree.
Yeah, we don’t know a lot about the Alice situation, but from what we’ve seen, I don’t think it was nearly as healthy as the sexy lesbian suicide pact. Which is saying something.
Among other things, it’s pretty clear she didn’t even realize it was a relationship.
We also have indications she is bi in this universe too, her comments to Leslie about choosing to date men suggests that she’s attracted to both and has previously always just chosen the more socially acceptable dating option… until she met leslie and her brain got broken by how cute she is.
I kinda feel like if you’re going to put Joyce that far to the left, surely Dorothy shouldn’t be all the way over there on the right. They were BOTH enthusiastically participating in that laundry room scene, after all.
I don’t think either of them are in Mary territory, but I mean, that’s too easy, that’s like not being Naomi or Blaine, etc, doesn’t make you a good parent.
In any case, both are deeply frustrating because they’ve given us plenty to sympathize with or care about, or shown moments of decency, but that also makes all the prickly parts of them that much worse.
Yeah, Jennifer’s far from the worst person in the comic, she’s not even the worst person we’ve seen this week. But I’m honestly just tired of her…lack of any real growth whatsoever. She’s still the same insecure girl desperately trying to hold herself and everyone else to her own immature standards of ‘coolness’ and ‘popularity’ like she’s in a high school movie from the 80s. Until she grows out of it even a *little* bit I’m just sick of her.
Y’know, I’m actually not sure about Ruth. She’s still drinking, but not to excess that we’ve seen (Aside from once when she went to talk to Jason at work), and she appears to be thinking about the implications of some of the things she did, like the power-dynamics problems of her dating Jennifer as an RA. It’s not some smooth upward trajectory, but that’s often how recovery is- you stumble, you maybe need to take some time to absorb things. Ruth does seem to be generally growing as a person, though, and that’s not something we can say for Jennifer.
Honestly, I’ll be really disappointed with the comic if Ruth is shown to now be able drink responsibly with no further struggles or apparent effort. I also don’t expect that at all.
wonder how fond raidah is of asher unelss she only cares about his potential connections since it seems liek putting up with jennifers bongoy/mean girl attitude would be something she’d not want in her friend group, ladder climbing aside, or try to get jennifer to control her behavior a bit
Not that we’d really know, honestly. People going to therapy don’t get better immediately, and consider that we’ve barely completed one semester of college in this webcomic. If she went once a week, Jennifer probably hasn’t even had a dozen sessions yet. How much better could we realistically hope she’d be? Especially since she has tackled some of her more obvious issues, like I don’t know if she drinks nowadays.
Yeah, Jenifer could be in therapy and not feel like her current relationship drama warrants being talked about, as far as she’s concerned she just solved a problem, why waste therapy time on that.
She did go to therapy before the timeskip, but it seems like she stopped. Sometime before the start of this semester, though it hasn’t been said explicitly.
Therapy takes time, effort, patient buy-in, vulnerability…I’m guess some of those factors may be lacking on Jennifer’s part. It could also be that the therapist is shitty or not the right fit for her, or just not experienced enough to see past things as Jennifer presents them.
I was anticipating that people were going to say therapy takes time i am well aware, of this fact I was just a jab at how Jenifer just seems to be regressing as person despite taking steps that would under non comedic circumstances would be a good start to improving herself.
It does take time, but also a lot of other things. Sometimes, even in real life, people put in the time but not anything else. And sometimes people come out of therapy better at using therapy talk, but not having made any real changes.
i mean she’s also a ‘rich’ girl so she could have one of those therapists that tell her what she wants to hear
Makes me wonder if theres any therapists that roll their eyes about rich ppl having issues, i’m sure some have valid ones but i can totally imagine some younger rich teen being like “Daddy bought my brother one yacht and i /only/ got a bmw”
well if they make each other miserable and don’t affect anyone else maybe that’d be better since idk if others would accept/forgive ashers past if they found out his involvement with blaine
maybe one day the ‘bicker like an old married couple’ saying will die out, i’m sure some ppl mean it in a lighthearted way but unfortunately i wouldn’t be surprised if half the ppl who fight shouldn’t be together but too stubborn to leave each other
You know it’s a shame, Jennifer despite the aggravated moments is one of my favorites, up there with Amber and Joyce. But her addiction to dysfunction in her relationships reminds to much of someone I know that way to problematic.
She seems like a younger Linda, anger outbursts in resturants over Walky making her look bad (in her mind), chasing after social status and treating relationships like accessories to herself, general quickness to cause drama and assign blame to others, refusal to have open communication of expectations etc.
That one scene where Jennifer accidentally admits out loud to Carla that she only got cookies from Linda because she’s “the white-passing daughter she really wanted”, and then immediately passed the cookies to Carla out of awkwardness and shame, will forever live in my brain.
Oof. You’re not wrong, and you just solidified my opposition to Asher x Ethan, because Ethan is nowhere near where he’d need to be to be a good partner. Asher would end up tending yet another dumpster fire and not getting his needs met/considered at all. Granted, Ethan’s situation is really understandable and I don’t think it’ll be permanent- he’s still grieving Mike and that’s totally fine- but still, right now is not the time for him and Asher to be getting involved.
Much as I’d love more MLM rep in the comic, and as much of a fantastic trash fire as it’d be to watch, Ethan would be a terrible partner for Asher in the moment for sure.
Legit I think Asher needs a Walky sorta partner. Maybe Walky-lite.
I can definitely see it being a coin toss between “concoct a series of increasingly elaborate and paranoid schemes in order to get them back together and/or blame somebody else for the breakup” and “You can’t break up with me if I break up with you first!” The important thing is that she doesn’t have admit to any sort of vulnerability or responsibility!
It’s great because the Sarah issue inspired discussion. I don’t think I’ve really seen anyone defending Jennifer about this behaviour, everyone just agrees she’s being malicious at worst and an idiot at best.
I’ll defend her on other stuff, but not with Asher. Not that I think she’s the dirt worst, exactly, but I do think her relationship with him has run its course and they’d both be better off ending it.
Sarah is complicated in a unique way that, despite disagreements, she can be friendly and caring for those she likes; Billie/Jennifer currently has none of that, and seems to revel in it.
I don’t think she’s malicious, maybe an idiot, but likely she is just young, desperate, and naive. She probably absorbed too much TV, because she seems to think cool guys are supposed to be brooding, smoking, and aloof – in her mind she is keeping him awesome and popular (something she seems to think is very important given how desperately she has been pursuing it throughout the comic, expect when she was with Ruth). Of course, if she wants Asher to be cool is out of genuine love for him and or if she just believes that while projecting much her need to fit in (and maybe show Ruth she is soo popular and cool now?) is debatable.
After seeing more recent strips with Linda I’m inclined to also blame Linda’s dysfunctional parenting influence. Not specifically with wanting a bad boy but the way she gets mad with Asher at the drop of a hat, even when he’s trying to do what she wants, it’s not really what she wants… she’s much more comfortable getting angry and making him guess how to fall in line then to flat out say what she wants. Can’t help but compare to how Linda gives and takes away her approval in an instant.
Thing is with Sarah is that she dislikes multiple people for different reasons, some of those reasons for some people are Justifiable and other reasons for other people I can understand but is still petty and/or unfair.
Jennifer on the other hand, this is just idiotic and is doing herself no favors.
Neither of them are the worst. They’re both great, but with issues. Buttifer Billieswurp learned about relationships by being neglected by her parents. She’s closest to one of their domestic workers.
I wonder if she’s changing palettes, or if it’s just happenstance she’s worn red a few times recently. Could be symbolic, transitioning from yellow to red. Or maybe nothing, none of them wear their standard colors all the time.
You know what makes this feel weird? We don’t see how Jennifer and Asher get together. We have no investment in this relationship. They’ve been dating for 3 years IRL now and I don’t know HOW or WHY they got together. What drew them to each other? Were there bad signs from the beginning? What was the dating process like before they became official? Did Jennifer just go “ok you’re my boyfriend now” and Asher just said “Okie Dokie”? When you do a timeskip and have two characters suddenly dating you kinda hope at some point they build upon WHY THEY’RE TOGETHER? I legit don’t know what Asher is getting out of this coupling other than maybe great sex.
yeah it was part of the ‘i’m jennifer now’ timeskip so maybe there wasn’t too much more to their relationship , maybe it was a makeout session/one night stand that lead to more and like “ok we’re exclusive now” versus slower paced college dating
You’re right, but I think that may be the point. Jennifer and Asher are a terrible couple, and I’m pretty sure the subtext is that they got together for shallow reasons that amount to “they’re a hot baddie”.
Jennifer seems to see him as a means to uphold her “above all this” attitude, and he takes her interest as a sign he’s moved past his street punk/mafioso past.
We’re now seeing the cracks in a ship that was doomed from the start.
As much as I have my suspicions of Asher, so far he’s been seem doing an okey job trying to have a grown-up relationship with Jennifer, honesty, loyalty, respect etc. Jennifer by contrast is backtracking going from “settling down” to wanting to relive high-school again. It’s like that one instance where she felt she had the upper hand on Sal gave her a drama rush and she fell off the wagon.
I don’t think it needs to be more complicated than that. They’re both hot, in the same social group, and were available. Why not, is about as common a reason to date/fuck in college as you can get. I will say Jen likely made the first move to prove how much better than Ruth she’s doing by dating a hot guy first. Asher probably just appreciated having a respectable girl to prove to himself he’s not a bad dude (which he still is by the way, don’t trust him).
Tbf when they were first introduced as a couple they had a semblance of functionality.
Jennifer had successfully isolated herself from her previous social group until that point and Asher didn’t have anyone from her past to be compared to. Now she’s berating him for something that wasn’t a problem before.
Their relationship wasn’t anything too profound anyway. They probably started dating because they liked each other’s vibe and attractiveness.
I agree with this, mainly because it seems at this point that Asher was actually looking for more from this and Jennifer wasnt. Now that its shaky Im not sure how much I care because their relationship before the drama seemed more superficial. Now, I dont know what their relationship is supposed to be either way. Is this really how it was at the start?
This is probably being saved for a flashback at some point because there’s almost a 100% chance that something incredibly sketchy happened to bring them together. Something that should have been a red flag to anyone who isn’t incredibly dysfunctional like Jennifer.
Given how he’s acting and his intended goal of cleaning up his life, there’s no way this is going to end without him getting fed up. Perhaps he and Ethan can dig themselves out of being awful together.
it’s only toxic on her end for now, unless asher does something ‘worse’ but hopefully more ppl will walk away from her if she keeps pulling off this shit
Yep. No matter what happens, if they care too much she freaks or because caring isn’t comfortable for her. So she pushes them away to force them to take her back. Which causes the cycle with Ruth.
When Asher eventually splits up with her she’s going to only have herself to blame, which she will as always simply pretend isn’t the case.
Billie cannot and will not let herself be happy because it doesn’t make sense to her, and the more Ruth tried to explain that to her the less she wanted to hear it. Was only ever gonna go this way.
Which is something Jennifer specifically told him she preferred. I don’t like Asher, but this really does read to me as “Okay, you want apathetic and aloof, I guess I’m doing that because I want you to be happy, or whatever approximation of that you’re actually capable of.” I may be wrong, of course.
That’s an idea I initially didn’t pick up on, but it could be the correct one. It seems a bit strange otherwise. Yes Jennifer has been out of line lately, and he did kiss Ethan. But then after all of that, he came back to Jennifer to wanting to keep the relationship intact. So it seems odd that he changed his attitude about it without anything else happening.
Jennifer thinks she wants indifference and passive aggressiveness because that’s probably how her parents interact with each other, and worse, with her. So it’s nice that Linda’s behavior never developed into a turn-on for either Sal or Walky. Jennifer is a hot mess, but consider she has really shitty parents in a comic that’s almost exclusively about bad parenting.
Honestly, I would argue that Walky absolutely does tend to recreate his parents’ dynamic in his own relationships (on a subconscious level, obviously). From what I can tell, Linda is a very passionate, plan-oriented, woman, who’s efforts to construct her own reality in opposition to the real one are both supported and mitigated by her husband, who likes to help her find compromises. Walky’s relationships with both Dorothy and Lucy have elements of this, albeit much less toxic ones!
Thanks for your well thought-out answer! I’d say Linda puts the passion into pass-ive aggress-ion, haha! But Walky is not often the target of that side of her.
I mean I kinda get it, I’m pretty sure Jennifer hates nobody as much as herself, so being respected and cherished by someone feels very low brainpower of them.
The fact that she is actively trying to undo his attempts at bettering himself is just
Awful.
I know she has her own issues but the fact if he tries to be better she gives him shit for it, then he does what she says she treats him like “oh you gave in, typical.” There is literally no winning with her.
I’m surprised I’m saying this after everything but
I hope Asher ends this, he can definitely do better than being stranded in a toxic relationship. Because he genuinely seems to want to be a better person and Billie most definitely does not.
100% this, jennifer does not want security in a relationship, she does not think she deserves security nor that stable people should have anything to do with her.
Her parents don’t treat her like she exists. And her closest model of a non-neglectful functional family is the Walkertons and how they treat their daughter.
“she’s toxic, everyone should abandon her” is boring.
she’s wounded, it’s going to be tough for whomever does it, but she deserves not to be abandoned by someone.
I mean, I would agree she’s trying not to be PHYSICALLY abusive. It’s almost like she’s purposefully trying to make up for that by being as emotionally abusive as possible though.
I’d argue that Jennifer is looking for what she reads as stability and comfort, and what others would class as deeply disfunctional but enduring consistancy. Even if the consistancy is a deeply unhealthy relationship where neither particularly likes the other.
Her dad isn’t the mayor. He tells the mayor to do terrible things and the mayor does them. https://www.dumbingofage.com/nina/ so he probably wouldn’t be interested in doing some corruption with organized crime.
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phew, almost escaped a trash ship
“Witch trash ship?” “Right.”
Well I see nothing wrong at all!
Right? Rock on, you wacky kids.
Probably not first
dammit jennifer
She’s got some weird kinks.
She’s a drama hurricane. (See Thag Simmons’ post about a dozen posts down)
Is not life like a hurricane?
“here in Duckberg…race cars lasers aeroplanes…it’s a duck blur…”
Hope you never meet captain planet Billie because he hates toxic stuff.
Captain Planet took one look at the cast of this comic and their relationships, went “Yeah, this is way over my pay grade. Good luck, kids!”, and nope’d right the f*ck out of there.
Let’s celebrate Willis’s new buffer record of 6 months and 24 days!!!
On the last day of Oktoberfest!!! 😋🍻
Cheers!
(I don’t drink, but that seemed like the appropriate response)
Prost!
L’chaim
Skol!
Do you think he ever looks back at the comic that is posted today and cringes at how much his style has changed
The archives, going back to “Roomies”, are full of redrawn scripts and apologies by Willis for his amateur drawing skills.
Kanpai!
Salud!
Oh, Bennifer. I love you, but you’re an idiot.
I think they will last.
In spite of all good judgment and sense
Damn Jennifer, just can’t be in a state where you and the people around you are happy and nonconfrontational, can you.
I think her last healthy relationship ended with her nearly dying in a drunk driving accident, so maybe this dynamic is for the best? I’m talking about whatever she had with Alice by the way, not the Ruth shit show.
Her relationship with Alice is only “maybe slightly healthy” but considering all of this I’m inclined to say it was probably going badly even before Billie literally drove them into a tree.
Yeah, we don’t know a lot about the Alice situation, but from what we’ve seen, I don’t think it was nearly as healthy as the sexy lesbian suicide pact. Which is saying something.
Among other things, it’s pretty clear she didn’t even realize it was a relationship.
Hey guess what? Made a reddit post for the first time in a while: https://reddit.com/r/dumbingofage/s/pC5eISd0SB
Very cool. Does positioning along the vertical axis have any meaning?
For some of them yeah, if this is about Joyce and Carla than yes that was intentional.
That’s the horizontal axis! Vertical axis is up and down.
Oooh then no.
Joyce’s placement is perfect
Point of order: Assuming characters’ sexualities are constant across universes, Robin is bi.
We also have indications she is bi in this universe too, her comments to Leslie about choosing to date men suggests that she’s attracted to both and has previously always just chosen the more socially acceptable dating option… until she met leslie and her brain got broken by how cute she is.
This is cute!!
I kinda feel like if you’re going to put Joyce that far to the left, surely Dorothy shouldn’t be all the way over there on the right. They were BOTH enthusiastically participating in that laundry room scene, after all.
Yeah Jennifer, of course, whatever you say
Ugh, you’re the worst.
indeed
It’s the last day of Oktoberfest. She’s the wurst!
mmmm… perhaps if not Asher sausage, she go for regular sausage and a modicum of beer 😋🌭🍻
People raging about Sarah last week, consider: maybe Jennifer was the real worst person all along.
This^
I don’t think either of them are in Mary territory, but I mean, that’s too easy, that’s like not being Naomi or Blaine, etc, doesn’t make you a good parent.
In any case, both are deeply frustrating because they’ve given us plenty to sympathize with or care about, or shown moments of decency, but that also makes all the prickly parts of them that much worse.
Yeah, Jennifer’s far from the worst person in the comic, she’s not even the worst person we’ve seen this week. But I’m honestly just tired of her…lack of any real growth whatsoever. She’s still the same insecure girl desperately trying to hold herself and everyone else to her own immature standards of ‘coolness’ and ‘popularity’ like she’s in a high school movie from the 80s. Until she grows out of it even a *little* bit I’m just sick of her.
Wait for it.
Just another decade or two, right?
I wonder what it’s going to take for her to finally have that epiphany. Asher blowing up at her? Watching Ruth move on?
She’s not drinking, so she’s in far better shape than she was at the start.
Better shape than Ruth is, honestly.
Y’know, I’m actually not sure about Ruth. She’s still drinking, but not to excess that we’ve seen (Aside from once when she went to talk to Jason at work), and she appears to be thinking about the implications of some of the things she did, like the power-dynamics problems of her dating Jennifer as an RA. It’s not some smooth upward trajectory, but that’s often how recovery is- you stumble, you maybe need to take some time to absorb things. Ruth does seem to be generally growing as a person, though, and that’s not something we can say for Jennifer.
Honestly, I’ll be really disappointed with the comic if Ruth is shown to now be able drink responsibly with no further struggles or apparent effort. I also don’t expect that at all.
wonder how fond raidah is of asher unelss she only cares about his potential connections since it seems liek putting up with jennifers bongoy/mean girl attitude would be something she’d not want in her friend group, ladder climbing aside, or try to get jennifer to control her behavior a bit
I certainly wasn’t raging over Sarah.
Sarah is very good at foreseeing very bad outcomes. That is a chick you wanna keep on Speed Dial.
“Am I extremely toxic and drive everyone else away? No, it’s Ruth who’s wrong.”
I mean, she is.
Both should never be in any relationship since they use physical and emotional violence on their partners.
Just be clear, that’s got nothing to do with why Ruth broke up with her.
I though Jenifer went to therapy? I could have sworn she went? If she is well she needs to find a new one.
The therapists at the college canonically suck at therapy, it’s been addressed before.
If so, that explains why many of the characters do not progress correctly.
Not that we’d really know, honestly. People going to therapy don’t get better immediately, and consider that we’ve barely completed one semester of college in this webcomic. If she went once a week, Jennifer probably hasn’t even had a dozen sessions yet. How much better could we realistically hope she’d be? Especially since she has tackled some of her more obvious issues, like I don’t know if she drinks nowadays.
It’s true, now that I think about it, because I have a feeling that Jennifer was just bragging about going to therapy, I mean, she just told Walky.
Yeah, Jenifer could be in therapy and not feel like her current relationship drama warrants being talked about, as far as she’s concerned she just solved a problem, why waste therapy time on that.
Indeed, “the therapists here are no good” could just mean “the one I saw didn’t fix me right away.”
She did go to therapy before the timeskip, but it seems like she stopped. Sometime before the start of this semester, though it hasn’t been said explicitly.
She’s still not drinking though, which is huge.
Did she go to a campus therapist? She’s one of the few characters rich enough to afford decent psychological care.
I think it’s just Dorothy?
And Dorothy lies by omission to her therapist in order to protect her future self’s image from muckraking tabloids.
Therapy takes time, effort, patient buy-in, vulnerability…I’m guess some of those factors may be lacking on Jennifer’s part. It could also be that the therapist is shitty or not the right fit for her, or just not experienced enough to see past things as Jennifer presents them.
I was anticipating that people were going to say therapy takes time i am well aware, of this fact I was just a jab at how Jenifer just seems to be regressing as person despite taking steps that would under non comedic circumstances would be a good start to improving herself.
It does take time, but also a lot of other things. Sometimes, even in real life, people put in the time but not anything else. And sometimes people come out of therapy better at using therapy talk, but not having made any real changes.
i mean she’s also a ‘rich’ girl so she could have one of those therapists that tell her what she wants to hear
Makes me wonder if theres any therapists that roll their eyes about rich ppl having issues, i’m sure some have valid ones but i can totally imagine some younger rich teen being like “Daddy bought my brother one yacht and i /only/ got a bmw”
I guess they just scale thing, the mechanism might not be very different from “Daddy gave my brother one more breadcrumb than me”.
Abuse and trauma are not exclusive to any one socioeconomic group.
If she is well, she needs to find a new one. If she is, well, she needs to find a new one. Confusing. Commas matter.
Oh yeah, this relationship is gonna last a lifetime for sure.
well if they make each other miserable and don’t affect anyone else maybe that’d be better since idk if others would accept/forgive ashers past if they found out his involvement with blaine
maybe one day the ‘bicker like an old married couple’ saying will die out, i’m sure some ppl mean it in a lighthearted way but unfortunately i wouldn’t be surprised if half the ppl who fight shouldn’t be together but too stubborn to leave each other
Not every relationship has to, though. Yanno?
…not that I don’t hope their inevitable split is a Hindenburg.
But think of the popcorn sales.
You know it’s a shame, Jennifer despite the aggravated moments is one of my favorites, up there with Amber and Joyce. But her addiction to dysfunction in her relationships reminds to much of someone I know that way to problematic.
She seems like a younger Linda, anger outbursts in resturants over Walky making her look bad (in her mind), chasing after social status and treating relationships like accessories to herself, general quickness to cause drama and assign blame to others, refusal to have open communication of expectations etc.
Huh. No wonder Linda likes her so much, then. That explains a whole lot.
What Linda likes is Buttifer’s father’s money and status.
or that she’s not black
*and
That one scene where Jennifer accidentally admits out loud to Carla that she only got cookies from Linda because she’s “the white-passing daughter she really wanted”, and then immediately passed the cookies to Carla out of awkwardness and shame, will forever live in my brain.
That’ll sure teach Asher for feeling like he can be comfortable and act like himself in a relationship.
would be interesting if he and lucy end up together if walky and jen break up with them
Now I want this to happen.
What an ironic gravatar to get…
Crack pairings that actually have good chemistry are always hilarious.
Oof. You’re not wrong, and you just solidified my opposition to Asher x Ethan, because Ethan is nowhere near where he’d need to be to be a good partner. Asher would end up tending yet another dumpster fire and not getting his needs met/considered at all. Granted, Ethan’s situation is really understandable and I don’t think it’ll be permanent- he’s still grieving Mike and that’s totally fine- but still, right now is not the time for him and Asher to be getting involved.
Much as I’d love more MLM rep in the comic, and as much of a fantastic trash fire as it’d be to watch, Ethan would be a terrible partner for Asher in the moment for sure.
Legit I think Asher needs a Walky sorta partner. Maybe Walky-lite.
ugh, jennifer. come on.
They better break up
And then Jen will ‘desperately’ chase after him. if not get madder like “you’re breaking up with ME? I”M the one who’ll break up with you!”
I can definitely see it being a coin toss between “concoct a series of increasingly elaborate and paranoid schemes in order to get them back together and/or blame somebody else for the breakup” and “You can’t break up with me if I break up with you first!” The important thing is that she doesn’t have admit to any sort of vulnerability or responsibility!
It’s great because the Sarah issue inspired discussion. I don’t think I’ve really seen anyone defending Jennifer about this behaviour, everyone just agrees she’s being malicious at worst and an idiot at best.
I’ll defend her on other stuff, but not with Asher. Not that I think she’s the dirt worst, exactly, but I do think her relationship with him has run its course and they’d both be better off ending it.
Sarah is complicated in a unique way that, despite disagreements, she can be friendly and caring for those she likes; Billie/Jennifer currently has none of that, and seems to revel in it.
I don’t think she’s malicious, maybe an idiot, but likely she is just young, desperate, and naive. She probably absorbed too much TV, because she seems to think cool guys are supposed to be brooding, smoking, and aloof – in her mind she is keeping him awesome and popular (something she seems to think is very important given how desperately she has been pursuing it throughout the comic, expect when she was with Ruth). Of course, if she wants Asher to be cool is out of genuine love for him and or if she just believes that while projecting much her need to fit in (and maybe show Ruth she is soo popular and cool now?) is debatable.
After seeing more recent strips with Linda I’m inclined to also blame Linda’s dysfunctional parenting influence. Not specifically with wanting a bad boy but the way she gets mad with Asher at the drop of a hat, even when he’s trying to do what she wants, it’s not really what she wants… she’s much more comfortable getting angry and making him guess how to fall in line then to flat out say what she wants. Can’t help but compare to how Linda gives and takes away her approval in an instant.
Thing is with Sarah is that she dislikes multiple people for different reasons, some of those reasons for some people are Justifiable and other reasons for other people I can understand but is still petty and/or unfair.
Jennifer on the other hand, this is just idiotic and is doing herself no favors.
Neither of them are the worst. They’re both great, but with issues. Buttifer Billieswurp learned about relationships by being neglected by her parents. She’s closest to one of their domestic workers.
Good colors for Jennifer Goddamn.
I mean, Black looks good on anyone but she is making that red top look good on her.
everything looks good with black tho, the bright red might be reflective of her aggressive behavior/lead to a fight or so XD
I wonder if she’s changing palettes, or if it’s just happenstance she’s worn red a few times recently. Could be symbolic, transitioning from yellow to red. Or maybe nothing, none of them wear their standard colors all the time.
It’s like every time Jennifer shows up Willis goes “How simultaneously hot and awful can I make her before Yoto reaches critical mass?”
Jennifer is the archetype of the Hot Mess.
She really loves her relationship to be in that gray area, like ciggy smoke.
*pauses strip on just the whiteboard again* Are you not ENTERTAINED?!?!
You know what makes this feel weird? We don’t see how Jennifer and Asher get together. We have no investment in this relationship. They’ve been dating for 3 years IRL now and I don’t know HOW or WHY they got together. What drew them to each other? Were there bad signs from the beginning? What was the dating process like before they became official? Did Jennifer just go “ok you’re my boyfriend now” and Asher just said “Okie Dokie”? When you do a timeskip and have two characters suddenly dating you kinda hope at some point they build upon WHY THEY’RE TOGETHER? I legit don’t know what Asher is getting out of this coupling other than maybe great sex.
yeah it was part of the ‘i’m jennifer now’ timeskip so maybe there wasn’t too much more to their relationship , maybe it was a makeout session/one night stand that lead to more and like “ok we’re exclusive now” versus slower paced college dating
Welp, just saw this comment that summarizes the relationship after I wrote mine.
You’re right, but I think that may be the point. Jennifer and Asher are a terrible couple, and I’m pretty sure the subtext is that they got together for shallow reasons that amount to “they’re a hot baddie”.
Jennifer seems to see him as a means to uphold her “above all this” attitude, and he takes her interest as a sign he’s moved past his street punk/mafioso past.
We’re now seeing the cracks in a ship that was doomed from the start.
As much as I have my suspicions of Asher, so far he’s been seem doing an okey job trying to have a grown-up relationship with Jennifer, honesty, loyalty, respect etc. Jennifer by contrast is backtracking going from “settling down” to wanting to relive high-school again. It’s like that one instance where she felt she had the upper hand on Sal gave her a drama rush and she fell off the wagon.
I don’t think it needs to be more complicated than that. They’re both hot, in the same social group, and were available. Why not, is about as common a reason to date/fuck in college as you can get. I will say Jen likely made the first move to prove how much better than Ruth she’s doing by dating a hot guy first. Asher probably just appreciated having a respectable girl to prove to himself he’s not a bad dude (which he still is by the way, don’t trust him).
Lotta Sarah’s responding to me right now.
Hey, I didn’t choose the Gravatar, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the system default as she’s usually the voice of reason.
Tbf when they were first introduced as a couple they had a semblance of functionality.
Jennifer had successfully isolated herself from her previous social group until that point and Asher didn’t have anyone from her past to be compared to. Now she’s berating him for something that wasn’t a problem before.
Their relationship wasn’t anything too profound anyway. They probably started dating because they liked each other’s vibe and attractiveness.
They had that semblance though because we only saw them from outside. Nothing of them interacting alone or as anything but a show for her old friends.
One thing we’ve seen with them is kissing. Including once when there wasn’t an audience. https://www.dumbingofage.com/seeme/
We never saw Jacob and Raidah kiss, as far as I remember. They probably did, but not showing it kind of emphasized a coldness to their relationship.
If either Asher or Jennifer or both are doing this as a show, the audience is inside the relationship.
I agree with this, mainly because it seems at this point that Asher was actually looking for more from this and Jennifer wasnt. Now that its shaky Im not sure how much I care because their relationship before the drama seemed more superficial. Now, I dont know what their relationship is supposed to be either way. Is this really how it was at the start?
[puts on foil hat]
She’s said she knows who Amazi-girl is (Sal), something certain parties want to know.
Or maybe to him, she felt like a kindred spirit of “instead of a family, I was born into a business”.
Yes! See, the things she’s ‘wrongest’ about are those she clings to and defends the most adamantly!
This is probably being saved for a flashback at some point because there’s almost a 100% chance that something incredibly sketchy happened to bring them together. Something that should have been a red flag to anyone who isn’t incredibly dysfunctional like Jennifer.
More like off the rails
“A good relationship is like fireworks: loud, explosive, and liable to maim you if you hold on too long.” (https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1274)
He doesn’t know she’s cheating on him with Amber yet.
How many people is Amber fucking?
well, i guess jen might have a front row seat to walky’s parents antics. Or her being treated as the substitute/’preferred’ daughter lol
urrrrrrrfgnjklb just break up with her Asher you clearly want to
Given how he’s acting and his intended goal of cleaning up his life, there’s no way this is going to end without him getting fed up. Perhaps he and Ethan can dig themselves out of being awful together.
Jennifer, can you TRY not being in a toxic relationship? For once?
it’s only toxic on her end for now, unless asher does something ‘worse’ but hopefully more ppl will walk away from her if she keeps pulling off this shit
I’m really hoping Asher is going so call her out at lunch and try to have a frank discussion about what exactly it is that she wants from him.
Unfortunately not gonna happen as raidah has brought her into her clique of awful human beings.
Quite the opposite. Jennifer doesn’t feel safe in a positive relationship, because then she’ll have to worry about poisoning it.
“phew, he doesn’t care, now i feel safe.”
Yep. No matter what happens, if they care too much she freaks or because caring isn’t comfortable for her. So she pushes them away to force them to take her back. Which causes the cycle with Ruth.
When Asher eventually splits up with her she’s going to only have herself to blame, which she will as always simply pretend isn’t the case.
Jennifer logic: I’ll posion the relationship first to save it from future poisioning! Yeah that sadly checks out.
“Mithridates, he died old.”
everything Jennifer does is toxic, her relationships never have a chance
Always feel like a need a shower after every update with their plot line lol
Way too much Tsun there, Jennifer, not nearly enough Dere.
…so Buttifer wants him again, now that he’s back to being ambivalent about her.
What could possibly go wrong…
yep right back to the only type of relationship Jennifer knows how to have, toxic.
girl you have got to let yourself heal
Billie cannot and will not let herself be happy because it doesn’t make sense to her, and the more Ruth tried to explain that to her the less she wanted to hear it. Was only ever gonna go this way.
Jennifer, no. Don’t tank another relationship.
Interesting. Yesterday it seemed like Asher was more invested. Now he’s all apathetic.
He went Ethan, and now can’t go back
Maybe if his stupid b o n g o girlfriend would treat him better, he’d be more enthused.
Which is something Jennifer specifically told him she preferred. I don’t like Asher, but this really does read to me as “Okay, you want apathetic and aloof, I guess I’m doing that because I want you to be happy, or whatever approximation of that you’re actually capable of.” I may be wrong, of course.
That’s an idea I initially didn’t pick up on, but it could be the correct one. It seems a bit strange otherwise. Yes Jennifer has been out of line lately, and he did kiss Ethan. But then after all of that, he came back to Jennifer to wanting to keep the relationship intact. So it seems odd that he changed his attitude about it without anything else happening.
Ethan kissed Asher, not the other way around.
Jennifer thinks she wants indifference and passive aggressiveness because that’s probably how her parents interact with each other, and worse, with her. So it’s nice that Linda’s behavior never developed into a turn-on for either Sal or Walky. Jennifer is a hot mess, but consider she has really shitty parents in a comic that’s almost exclusively about bad parenting.
Honestly, I would argue that Walky absolutely does tend to recreate his parents’ dynamic in his own relationships (on a subconscious level, obviously). From what I can tell, Linda is a very passionate, plan-oriented, woman, who’s efforts to construct her own reality in opposition to the real one are both supported and mitigated by her husband, who likes to help her find compromises. Walky’s relationships with both Dorothy and Lucy have elements of this, albeit much less toxic ones!
Thanks for your well thought-out answer! I’d say Linda puts the passion into pass-ive aggress-ion, haha! But Walky is not often the target of that side of her.
(david attenborough voice) and here we have it, a rare sighting of the elusive reverse tsundere
I mean I kinda get it, I’m pretty sure Jennifer hates nobody as much as herself, so being respected and cherished by someone feels very low brainpower of them.
Asher needs to leave her
The fact that she is actively trying to undo his attempts at bettering himself is just
Awful.
I know she has her own issues but the fact if he tries to be better she gives him shit for it, then he does what she says she treats him like “oh you gave in, typical.” There is literally no winning with her.
I’m surprised I’m saying this after everything but
Asher deserves better
Once again, Jennifer shows that she has great intuition.
I hope Asher ends this, he can definitely do better than being stranded in a toxic relationship. Because he genuinely seems to want to be a better person and Billie most definitely does not.
Oh jennifer no… thats a sign that he’s had it with your shit.
We can only hope
I mean i can hope that Jennifer gets murdered by the mafia but sadly hope only goes so far.
Let’s throw Lucy in there for good measure, being her roommate and all
Finally Asher decided to break up with her? Let’s hope for this!
. . . . :normel:
she can’t possibly be this fucking stupid
Au contraire!
Certainly this isn’t Smarting of Age
The devoted effort to avoid personal growth and development is a hallmark of this strip.
Expect. NO. OTHER. OUTCOME. muahhhhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha
I think you’re underestimating her by a lot.
Have people already decided between Jennifer being attached to toxic people and couple must have some kind of distance to keep the good relationship?
I’m leaning towards ‘Jennifer doesn’t believe she deserves to be happy’.
She’s explicitly said it in the past. That she’s toxic and can’t be involved with anyone decent because she’d ruin them.
100% this, jennifer does not want security in a relationship, she does not think she deserves security nor that stable people should have anything to do with her.
Her parents don’t treat her like she exists. And her closest model of a non-neglectful functional family is the Walkertons and how they treat their daughter.
“she’s toxic, everyone should abandon her” is boring.
she’s wounded, it’s going to be tough for whomever does it, but she deserves not to be abandoned by someone.
She’ll be divorced four times before she’s 55.
twice from Walky
Thanks Lucy!
Was this sarcasm? Because obviously Asher isn’t having a good time already
I am realizing fully that Jennifer doesnt really want a relationship at all, which really should’ve fully dawned on me sooner but, eh.
Jennifer doesn’t want people getting attached to her, she craves intimacy and respect but she doesn’t feel like she deserves it.
okay now let’s hope they meet ethan at the table beside linda and charles
and also sydney is the server
I don’t know if Willis is trying to make me actively dislike Billie but I’m getting pretty close there.
Eh, I still like Billie.
I’ve actively disliked Jennifer since she was introduced, though.
Billie is violent and abusive to her relationships.
Jennifer is trying not to be.
I mean, I would agree she’s trying not to be PHYSICALLY abusive. It’s almost like she’s purposefully trying to make up for that by being as emotionally abusive as possible though.
Jennifer is emotionally abusive and distant towards people. Billie was at least the honest version of her.
I’d argue that Jennifer is looking for what she reads as stability and comfort, and what others would class as deeply disfunctional but enduring consistancy. Even if the consistancy is a deeply unhealthy relationship where neither particularly likes the other.
yikes
dump her ass
Never thought I’d say; Asher deserves better
Perhaps he is only putting up with her for other motifs.
After all, he is mob family, and Jennifer’s family is real estate and mayor.
Perhaps he is just after, how you earthlings put it, “networking”?
Then why not just cheat on her and be quiet about it? He genuinely seems to want to change
Her dad isn’t the mayor. He tells the mayor to do terrible things and the mayor does them. https://www.dumbingofage.com/nina/ so he probably wouldn’t be interested in doing some corruption with organized crime.
Walky and Asher being so alike.
My thoughts on this:
“Asher, please. You are trying to be a better person. Jennifer is not. Cavaet emptor.”